Lynch mob beats to death a looter and drags his body through the streets in Haiti

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

A mob of men and children watch as the bloodied corpse of a suspected thief is brutally beaten by a man with a stick.

The victim is naked and bound at his hands and feet. It is broad daylight in the devastated capital city of Haiti.

These are the latest in a series of chilling images from the country as anarchy threatens to destabilise the relief effort following Tuesday's earthquake.

Fears are growing for the continued safety of the nation with violence rife as scavengers and looters swarm over the wrecks of shops, carrying off anything they can find.

Robbers prey on survivors struggling without supplies in makeshift camps on roadsides littered with debris and decomposing bodies.

One Russian search team said the general insecurity was forcing them to suspend their rescue efforts after nightfall.

Some of the trouble stems from the destruction of the the country's main jail and subsequent absence of its prisoners.

Beaten: A man lashes at the corpse with a stick in front of a crowd, including children (far right)

Paraded: The victim is hauled along the road in Port-au-Prince

Lawless: Reports of gunfire illustrate the loosening of police power in the capital

Every man for himself: People clash as the search for food and water turns violent

All the while rescue workers have continued to search for anybody still alive in the mountains of rubble.

A team from Britain used hammers and chisels to free a woman trapped beneath a collapsed concrete building.

They spent six hours digging the 39-year-old woman out from under the ruins of her home in Port-au-Prince.

Dan Cooke, a Wiltshire firefighter who is part of the rescue team working in the shattered country, said: 'There was a woman yesterday under three or four floors of concrete squashed in with dead members of her family.

'That was a hammer and chisel job and it took six hours before the doctor assigned to our team took her to hospital.

'It's a great lift but people think it's like scoring a point or scoring a goal and it's not.'

Devastation: People risk further injury by rummaging through the rubble of destroyed buildings

Stand by you: US Secretary of State of Hilary Clinton at the country's airport yesterday evening. The devastated nation's president (second from right) listens intently

Tensions have been rising among those awaiting international help and hunting for missing relatives as aid begins to trickle in four days after an earthquake that authorities say killed 200,000 people.

A senior U.N. official warned that hunger will fuel trouble if aid does not arrive soon, although the law and order situation remains under control 'for the time being'.

But American security of state Hilary Clinton, who visited the country this weekend, has vowed the US will stand by Haiti.

'We will also be conveying very directly and personally to the Haitian people our long-term unwavering support, solidarity and sympathies,' said Clinton, who was accompanied on her flight to the country by a raft of supplies.

Haiti's shell-shocked government has given the U.S. control over its main airport to bring order to aid and food flights from around the world and speed relief to the impoverished Caribbean nation.

As well as the violence, though, it is the sheer impractically of so many aircraft at a small airport that has seriously hampered the provision of aid.

'It's like getting a billiard ball through a straw,' US Vice President Joseph Biden said.

Refugee camp: Throngs of people queue at the Delmas stadium which has become a centre for aid distribution

Free-for-all: Desperate survivors grapple with another as aid packages are distributed in the streets

In a rare moment of positivity, a team of British firefighters fought for five-hours to save a two-year-old girl from the rubble of a nursery destroyed by the quake.

The hysterical toddler, called Mia, had been trapped under the ruins of the building for three days alongside the bodies of her dead friends before her breathing was picked up by her rescuers' sonar equipment.

Working in sweltering heat, the firemen, from Manchester and Wales, then dug with their hands, shovels and picks to reach her.

The gap through which they pulled Mia was so small that they had to carefully cut away her pigtails - which were held by pink hairbands - to prise her out from under the ruins.

Dehydrated but suffering from nothing more than cuts and bruises, the little girl was then reunited with her mother, who had been watching helplessly.

Safe: Mia is handed back to her mother by the British firefighters who hauled her out of the debris in Haiti